Let me direct you to the wonderful K. Marino and her delightful series "Into The Hourglass". It's worth your time, guys.

Did you know that I'm a fictional character? I appear in a number of novels, short stories, and even a fictional blog! You can check me out on my blog, where my sister Thea and I battle everyday nuisances with off-the wall humor and a ragtag collection of exotic dancers.

Learn why you should never spend a two-headed quarter, what would happen if a woman used a urinal in a public restroom, and how to combat the evil International Hair Conspiracy.

Grab a Cosmopolitan or a Happy Skipper and join Thea and myself on the strangest blog you'll ever read:

I have been frustrated lately about the lack of paragraphs in the works of writers here on Booksie. Here are some rules:

Convention normally insists that a new paragraph begins with each change of speaker:

"I don't care what you think anymore," she said, jauntily tossing back her hair and looking askance at Edward.

"What do you mean?" he replied.

"What do you mean, 'What do I mean?'" Alberta sniffed. She was becoming impatient and wished that she were elsewhere.

"You know darn well what I mean!" Edward huffed.

"Have it your way," Alberta added, "if that's how you feel."

In proofreading and editing your writing, remember that quotation marks always travel in pairs! Well, almost always. When quoted dialogue carries from one paragraph to another (and to another and another), the closing quotation mark does not appear until the quoted language finally ends (although there is a beginning quotation mark at the start of each new quoted paragraph to remind the reader that this is quoted language).

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”